MOTh: Days 28 and 29

3 Gifts in Community

1. I'm thankful for the Bible study I've joined here in Korea.  This is a group of women who are all unmarried and in the same program to teach.  We've been studying community, and I've been learning a lot.  Furthermore, it's really nice to meet with a group that's full of people who are in the exact same station in life.  It's reassuring to hear my same struggles coming out of their mouths, and it's such a blessing to have just about every viewpoint of the spectrum represented in our group, so we get the full gamut of perspective.
2. I'm thankful for the Bible study I joined in high school.  We still communicate regularly - more so than usual these days.  We've all changed a good deal, but it's amazing to have a group that immediately knows the background story that you bring into any situation you lay before them.  Whether we come to each other with a life update or asking for opinions on which umbrella to buy, we know each other and how to answer.
3. In case you've missed the rest of my thankfulness posts, I'm thankful for my family.  Today, I came across the picture below, and immediately thought of my cousin.  The more I talk about my relationship with her, the more I'm told it's unusual and something to be cherished; think about it: I have a cousin with whom I'm so close that we would fall into the superficial definition of "sisters," even according to those who have them.  That is a blessing that few can claim.

3 Gifts Red

1. I'm thankful for Kris and Cora, who live upstairs.  They're both sweet, incredibly caring people, and I'm so happy for them to have been married recently.  (Their wedding colors were Black, White, and Red.)  And for bonus points, the color of the hydrogen peroxide bottle that Kris ran about a mile to get for me in order to help me stop an allergic reaction is (you guessed it) red.
2. I'm thankful for Dr. Nate Kerr, who introduced me to Soren Kierkegaard.  Soren changed my life through his book Fear and Trembling, which happens to be bound in red.  His words and Nate's teachings changed everything.  Not a day goes past without me repeating a Kierkegaard quote or concept to myself.
3. I'm thankful for the blood of Christ.  I'm so overwhelmed by it.  I'm crushed that it was necessary.  But I'm thankful.  I don't have enough words to convey that.  Luckily, I get an eternity to attempt to do it.

The highest

Blimey Cow photo-a-day 27. A favorite quote

Since I first read this quote in Nate Kerr's Christian Tradition class (the class that is responsible for the destruction of my faith), I have not been able to shake it.  Morning, noon, or night, it will creep into my head, and I will find myself meditating on it.  No matter where I am when it hits, a quick prayer, even uttered by my heart in the spirit of the quote, will never fail to bring me back to the feet of Christ.

I don't know if it's because I'm finally fulfilling my purpose as a creation to praise the Creator...

I don't know if it's because, in praying this, I must fully turn my attention to G-d...

I don't know if it's just because I resonate so deeply with Augustine here...

But I do know that I never feel more right than when I'm acting with this quote at the forefront of my plans.

I would strongly, strongly recommend that you read a copy of Augustine's Confessions, which happens to be my favorite book.  I've linked an online preview of it for you, to make my point for me.  This book has entirely shaped the way that I write about faith and G-d (if you read it and read some of my such writings, I promise you, the influence will be unmistakable).  Seriously, check it out.  You won't be sorry you did.

Beyond that, I would encourage you to start praying this, as Augustine (and, to an extent, Paul) prayed.  I guarantee you, it will change your life.

Keep loving.

The gift of hearing

Not everyone can hear.  It's something we take for granted, but we shouldn't.

For a while, my mom thought she had lost hearing in one of her ears.  There were all sorts of tests done, an interesting edge of tension around the house... but the doctors found nothing wrong; her hearing was pretty much perfect.  In the end, it turned out to be a slight delay in the processing of the input from that ear.  She would see our mouths moving, but not be able to understand what we were saying, because she would get a garbled message until 30 seconds later or so when it processed.  That seems so awful to me.  It was frustrating enough being on the outside of it, but being on the inside seems even worse.  (Personally, I think she has a brand of Sensory Integration Dysfunction, but I'm no doctor.)

I say all this, because the thought of hearing has come up a lot in my life this week.

First, someone posted a recording of the voicemail message of a girl I knew in high school who died in 2009.  It was unreal hearing her voice again, and made me desperate to hear Kyle's.  Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, no similar such recording exists for him.  Then, today, I listened to a sermon of Nate Kerr's from later that year.  Hearing Nate's voice again made me realize just how much I miss him and his classes.  Granted, that's also something that's been slowly building this week, but now it's painful.

In a way, I found Nate's classes to be my small group in college, especially the ones that I had a free hour after.  There were those of us who would hang around and discuss religion, philosophy, life, etc., and he would guide us and speak truth into our lives.  It was those classes that made me feel okay working the nursery on Saturdays at Yeshuat Yisrael.  I fully considered him a pastor of mine, and had him fill out several letters of recommendation as such.  Now, I'm finding it harder to be fed, and there are no Nate Kerr classes to make up for it.  My heart aches.

And yet, I can still hear his voice.  I can still hear MK's voice.  It's amazing what technology does for us.

Don't wait until people are gone from your life; soak them up as much as you can while you have them.


Yes, I fully realize that I'm not posting a photo.  I have the perfect photo to put up, but I forgot to take it today.  It will be here tomorrow.

First (and Second) Grade Philosophy

Today, in my first and second grade reading class, I read them a book that I knew was too hard for them, but, with the help of my head teacher's on-the-fly translating, they were able to understand.  I read it to them because I think it teaches an amazingly important lesson - one that it took me until college and Nate Kerr to learn, and here it was, all packaged neatly into a children's book (that one of my kids already knew and loved, mind you).  Here's what I want you to do.  I want you to log into your Amazon.com account, click on the title of the book below.  Read the preview pages and see if you can keep up with my first and second graders:

The Five Little Fiends

by Sarah Dyer

Now, I don't want you to feel bad if you don't come up with the answers my kids did.  These are the same kids that defined "friend" as "the act of loving." (Well, roughly.  We did that in Korean, so, technically, they defined "friend" as "사랑해.")

Blimey Cow Photo-a-Day 07. Something you LOVE:
My students.
Don't worry, they don't always look as frustrated as the guys do;
I'd just had them line up for their stickers when I remembered I wanted to take this shot.

So, I asked the kids to do a "thinking quiz."  I asked them to tell me what we should learn from this book. Here are the answers I got back, translated from Korean:

1. We shouldn't steal.
2. If we do steal, we should go to the police and give it back.
3. Everything needs everything else.
4. Everyone and everything is connected.
5. We need everyone.

They're impressive little munchkins, aren't they?  AND, this was with no prompting from the teachers, except the repetition of the question.  I'm proud to be their teacher. :)

I'll leave it up to you to decide which theme it took me until college to learn. ;)

Lent: The Teacher

***Don't forget to sign the petition (and this one too!) to save refugees from North Korea!***

Blessing #18 - Dr. Nathan R. Kerr

There is not a day that goes by without Nate Kerr having some influence on my life.  It's not like I'm thinking every day, "Oh, Nate Kerr taught me that," but, every now and then I stop to reflect, and I realize how much he has shaped my world view.  Today, it was twice that I had that moment - where I realized that I never would have been saying that things that I was saying if it wasn't for my four years of tutelage under him.

Philosophy for Theology I, October 2009

I want to share some of the parameters of my world view, as shaped by Nate Kerr:

1. "[G-d] is so high among the highest, and I am low among the lowest, a mean thing." (Augustine)  G-d is beyond our intellectual capacity.  Understanding of Him can only be brought by divine revelation, but there will always be mystery (and lots of it) surrounding Him.  It takes extreme amounts of faith in our science-driven world to accept that.
2. We are much more connected to those other than ourselves than we can possibly know.  The human experience is one of joined-ness, and, as such, all human life is sacred.  It is not our place to take it.  Those who do so must first be ordained by G-d.  
3. The world doesn't like those who think outside the presented norms.  The world especially doesn't like those who are correct in thinking outside the presented norms.  This doesn't mean that you should conform; it simply means that you need to re-enter The Cave in the full awareness of what you are doing.
4. It's harder to receive a good thing when you were expecting a bad one than it is to receive a bad thing when you were expecting a good one.
5. Love never fails.

I certainly have more, but I think those are my Top Five.  What are yours?

Lent: Joseph Kony

***Don't forget to sign the petition (and this one too!) to save refugees from North Korea!***

Blessing #14: Shared Dreams

Warning:  This post is not rated G or PG, as it discusses incredibly graphic violence.  The video at the end has a much more user-friendly rating.

Joseph Kony.

Joseph Kony.

I keep writing his name, hoping it will get easier, but it doesn't.

I try to not hate anyone, but I can't guarantee that I don't hate this man.  I've spent so much time debating with Nate Kerr what I should do if I ever met this man face-to-face.  I firmly believe that you cannot bring peace through violence, but it is Joseph Kony who is the question to my logic.  Joseph Kony tests every single thing that I claim as a conviction of morality.  I try to censor myself when I talk about him, as I don't like upsetting people, but I will not be doing that today.  The information I will share with you today is the result of years of research on my own part.

In the 1980's, a rebel force rose up against the Ugandan government.  After near defeat, a voice rose up among the rebels: that of Alice Lakwena, the cousin to the then unknown Joseph Kony.  In many ways, she was equated to Joan of Arc for her people.  But in 2007, after fleeing from more technologically advanced forces, she died while hiding in a refugee camp.

Enter Joseph Kony.

Joseph Kony pulled back together his cousin's troops, and promised to instate a government based on the 10 Commandments, but his own people were scared, and turned on him.  He was furious, and began kidnapping their children to brainwash and enlist in his military actions.  He believed (rightly) that it was a lot easier to teach values, rather than reteach values.

His methods are brutal, but effective.

When a child is captured, his or her first act as a member of The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is to perform a public murder of a prominent member of their community, usually their own parents.  Should their mother be pregnant, it is not unheard of for the child to be forced to slice open his or her mother's belly (while she is alive) and have to eat the unborn child him/herself.  This paves the way for a series of psychological traumas that break down the structures of a healthy human mind.  This way, the LRA can mold this mind to accept unnatural actions as normal.  Secondarily, the child is warned that, even if they could escape, they would have nothing to go back to; their community would not want them after they performed a crime so heinous.  This is, sadly, not untrue.

The child is treated well, briefly, but will soon be beaten within an inch or his or her life (assuming he or she is not deemed dispensable).  If they survive, they are expected to keep quiet and follow the orders of their higher ups, or else they will be beaten again, or, worse, forced to beat and/or kill someone they care about within the LRA.

Girls are treated the same as the boys, until they hit puberty, when they are assigned a husband.  Men are assigned wives, based on their rank.  The highest ranked men get the most beautiful and useful wives.  They also are allowed the most wives.  Wives are also valued by their ranking within the LRA.  They are expected to feed their husbands' sexual appetites on demand, doing anything and everything that he wants.  Wives are expected to have sons and lots of them.  The punishment of wives who fail to meet these expectations is left to the discretion of their husbands.

Children who escape require years of rehabilitation, and, even then, they are rarely welcomed by their communities.  Many of them are so indoctrinated by Joseph Kony (especially those who are born into the LRA) that there is no way to restore them to a healthy mindset.  Joseph Kony has permanently addled them.

But there is a solution.

This is a moment I have craved and yearned after for years.  The time is now.  Watch this video and take action.  It's thirty minutes, but you don't even notice them ticking by.  This may be the most important thing you watch this year.  The end of this horrific plague is drawing near.

KONY 2012 from INVISIBLE CHILDREN on Vimeo.

Make a difference HERE.

Maybe we've been thinking too narrowly.

Matthew 5:3-12

New International Version (NIV)

   ³ “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
   for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
⁴ Blessed are those who mourn,
   for they will be comforted.
⁵ Blessed are the meek,
   for they will inherit the earth.
⁶ Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
   for they will be filled.
⁷ Blessed are the merciful,
   for they will be shown mercy.
⁸ Blessed are the pure in heart,
   for they will see God.
⁹ Blessed are the peacemakers,
   for they will be called children of God.
¹⁰ Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
   for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
   ¹¹ “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. ¹² Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

"ROYSTER TEACH-UH!"  I heard my name called with such enthusiasm that I couldn't help but translate it in my head to mean, "Oh my gosh, I'm so excited to see you!  I love seeing you!"  I looked up in time just to see a couple of my more familiar students running off the soccer pitch of the English Academy next to the school where I teach.
"Royster Teach-uh!  Hi!"
"Hi!"
"...Water?  Please?"
I smiled.  This was one of those few moments that I didn't feel like their excitement had been merely a ploy to get something from me, but, even if it was, I'll never be one to refuse a child water.  The two boys quickly downed half of my 1.5 liter bottle, smiled, chatted through one of their memorized dialogues with me, and then gave the standard, abrupt, "Okay, byeee!" and ran back off to play more soccer.
I continued my walk to the bus stop, and looked back over my shoulder as I rounded the corner.  The sight that greeted me this time left me in a state of mild self-argument.  One of the boys, having grown tired of the soccer game, had climbed up on top of the goal netting, and was lounging there, using it as a hammock.  My first instinct was to call out to him to get down, but the more I looked at it, the more I realized that it was not going to break under his small body weight, so I just laughed and enjoyed it.

Later, I got to thinking about the instance.  This boy wanted to be close to his friends and close to the action, but was too tired to still be in the thick of it.  He came up with a creative solution.  He could even still contribute to the game, calling out helpful warnings to the goalie beneath him.

What if we've been thinking too narrowly about our walk with Christ?  What if, when we rest, we don't need time out from the battle?  What if we just need a different position?  What if we need to create a new position?

Jesus brought about revolution, but He did not do it in the way that anyone else revolted, he created a new position, a new type of King, a new type of leader.  After all, who has ever heard of a peaceful revolution before or after?  Nonetheless, this is what He brought.  He left us instructions for how to continue it too.  Philip Zimmerman, pastor of the KiA Mainz church (I attended Project:Camp in 2008 [see the article linked to Phil's name] and interned there in 2009), often speaks of how the Kingdom of G-d is not some far off place, it's in us now, and it's our job to spread the Kingdom through everything we do.  Dr. Nathan Kerr adamantly agrees with him (and I'm going to quote Nate here, even though his writing is on such a high level, but what he has to say makes it worth deciphering):

What has become increasingly apparent to me is the way in which the ecclesiocentric approach short-circuits the practice of theology as a specifically dogmatic task. There are several dimensions to this short-circuiting. On the one hand, the ecclesiocentric construal of the church as a distinctively Christian culture renders a certain ecclesiological natural theology unavoidable. Whether one is speaking of the need for a “Christian social imaginary” as the condition for hearing and carrying out the task of the gospel (as does James K. A. Smith ); of the need to render an account of Christianity as a “habitable world” and to witness to a given Christian culture’s “particular way of structuring the whole” as requisite to the “intelligibility” and “truth” of the gospel proclamation (as we find in the work of Stanley Hauerwas and Bruce Marshall ); or speculatively, of the need to consider the church as its own historically “cultural” entity, as in God’s intention “antecedent” to (and so historically a condition of) the gospel (as does Robert Jenson ), the result is for all intents and purposes the same: the positing of a Christian culture or worldview as the real Anknüpfungspunkt (point of contact) required for the hearing of the gospel and thus the virtual identification of Christian mission with enculturation, or what John Flett would call propaganda.  

 (Incidentally, when Googling to find the correct interview with Nate, I'm pretty sure I stumbled across the blog of a good friend of mine from my freshman year of college.  If you understood and liked what Nate had to say, you'd like what Nathaniel Maddox says too.)

So, now that you're probably entirely overwhelmed, let me just write one question for you in big, bold letters so that you know what I've been asking myself today:

Have I been approaching this peaceful revolution from the sidelines or from the goalposts?

Rewrite

A couple years ago, a certain Dr. Nathan Kerr (Click his name for a classic Nate Kerr sermon on the Kingdom of G-d.) asked me to write an essay about what Jesus means to me.  Frustrated, I stared at a blank page for several days.  My ideas about Him teetered between heretical and apathetic.  As I explained to Nate (This is a sermon on Jesus' Sermon on the Mount), I had never given much thought to Jesus Himself, past that He was G-d made flesh, come to die for our sins.  I'd always focused on G-d the Father instead.  Ultimately, I settled on this thesis:

For me, Yeshua is Immanuel; He is G-d with us.  He is G-d the Father choosing to meet His children where they are, in their ignorance, and spend His eternity with them.  

It was good; it was touching; it earned me an A.  Mission accomplished. 

However, being in Korea has made me rethink that thesis a bit.  In fact, this weekend it has been one of the core ideas on my mind.  I went so far as to consider rewriting the whole paper and sending it to the overworked Dr. Kerr (Really, click his name... This time you'll read his words his book, Christ, History, and Apocalyptic), but then I decided that he didn't need to be regrading the papers of an alum... he's got plenty of his own current students' papers to deal with, I'm sure.   (Instead, I will send him the link to this post, and pretend like that's not overwhelming either... haha.)

Living in Korea has gotten me thinking a lot about how the Gentiles must have felt, all the way up until the time of Christ.  In a lot of ways, Korean culture and Jewish culture are very similar.  They're both based in Eastern traditions, so I'm sure it was bound to happen; I just didn't think about it until I was immersed in it.  One of the most prominent commonalities is their views on a non-member of their heritage.  They could be "fully" accepting toward that person, but, in the end, that person was still an outsider.  The opinion of the national would always hold more weight.  The national would always take priority.  The outsider would never be expected to fit in, never be expected to understand.  It's not even necessarily a malicious act (although I'm sure there are some people who do mean it that way... people are people.), it's just the culture.

That being said, in spite of best intentions, there are some really lonely days for your resident outsider.  I've lately been using those days to try to understand Gentile culture though, and I've got to say, it's made me appreciate Jesus a lot more.  I feel like I'm coming to understand the heart of G-d better too.  Like any good Sunday School student, I can tell you that G-d sent Jesus to die because He loves all people and wants all people to be with Him, but having an experience like this is making it so much more tangible.

I'm really not sure that I can explain it better than that, but I would encourage you to think about the Gentiles and Waygooks the next time you're feeling on the outside of a group or event... maybe then, you will come to appreciate Jesus a little more too.

This is a picture off of Facebook of a group of us on a recent trip to Seoul.  The first comment was from a Korean student: "Wow!!  Waygooks!  Cool!"  Like I said, it's not really an attempt toward malicious alienation... it just happens. haha

Love you!